Recovery.gov Guru Named Obama CIO

The Obama administration named Vivek Kundra, chief technology officer for Washington, D.C., as its new chief information officer on Thursday, tasking the 34-year-old with taking charge of the government’s various computer systems and making information more available online.

It’s a new position for the administration and one that shouldn’t be confused with the much-awaited chief technology officer that President Barack Obama promised to appoint during the campaign. Mr. Kundra’s job will be more on the operational side than the CTO job, which is expected to be more focused on policy issues.

“The White House decision to create a Chief Information Officer is clear sign that this administration appreciates the role that information technology should play both in setting the government agenda and making it efficient,” said Information Technology Industry Council president Dean Garfield in a statement.

There’s no word yet on who might be tapped as CTO. The decision by Obama friend and tech adviser Julius Genachowski to pass it up, in favor of running the FCC, prompted some hand-wringing in tech circles that the position won’t be as influential as some had hoped.

Mr. Kundra is probably best known for overhauling the D.C. government’s tech system and replacing it with one that provides real-time data for the mayor and his deputies about where money is being spent. The D.C. government also started putting more information online after he took over, even sponsoring an “Applications for Democracy” contest last year for programmers to come up with new ways of using D.C. data in iPhone and Internet applications.

Mr. Kundra was part of Obama’s transition tech team and was tasked with designing Recovery.gov, a Web site that’s supposed to provide information on how stimulus money is being spent. There’s not much detailed information so far, although Obama advisers say that will change in coming weeks.